Diablo III patch incoming, real money market delayed

It seems like just about everything that gets released nowadays has a patch of some kind or another that comes out a week or so later. Blizzard’s latest creation, Diablo III, is no exception. The game, while exciting, has had more than its fair share of problems. In an attempt to right the ship and make sure Diablo III continues to be a success, Blizzard has released a statement announcing updates and a future plan for the game.

Blizzard Community Manager Nethaera made a post in Blizzard’s forums today addressing the plan moving forward with fixing some of the glitches that have been found in the game. Hotfixes to address a variety of problems, such as the game ending glitch when you give your first NPC a shield, have already been handled. Other glitches, however, such as the disappearance of achievements, have yet to be rectified. We’ve been assured by Nethaera that these problems are being looked into. The hope is that all of these issues will be resolved with the patch that is to released within the next week.

The stability of the platform is critical for Blizzard to unveil the next part of the game. Blizzard’s plans to release an Auction House that uses real money to buy and sell items. This simply wouldn’t work in a world where users are reporting game glitches every hour. With real cash in the balance, stability is a must. Since they are still resolving those issues, the real money auction house has been postponed, leaving the only timeframe for its deployment to “soon”.

Blizzard has made a lot of promises in this update, but coupled those promises with no actual expectations or timeframes. The news that they are working on a patch is comforting, but with a game this popular the volume of users with potential issues is significant, and the negative thoughts on a platform like this are always the loudest. If Blizzard decides to push a sloppy patch that only solves a handful of issues, the results for the future of the game could be severe.